How I Secretly Quit My Secret Habit of Secretly Drinking

Quieting the Nighttime Voices

The night before last an unwanted visitor crept into our house. As my husband and I drifted to sleep she was already inside, stealthily moving to her target. If the automatic ice-maker on the freezer hadn’t dumped its load just then – its familiar rumble jolting me from the verge of dreams – I would have dozed on, never the wiser. But my eyes opened and there she was, watching me. She went into action the moment I discovered her presence, slipping under the covers and whispering in my ear.

Her method is always the same. She starts out friendly enough, chattering about the events of the day as if from my perspective, but then quietly points out the things that escaped my notice: a worry, a slight, a misstep, a failure. Soon she is connecting decades’ worth of dots, reminding me that I should always worry, always guard myself, that I always get it wrong, that I am unworthy. Then she flicks the switch on her projector, playing scenes I don’t want to see.

She first appeared when I was three or four. I cried and sobbed so loudly my sisters awoke and ran for my mother, who sat on the edge of my bed and asked “What’s wrong, Jeannie?”

“I’m scared of the magic pictures!” I wailed.

“What are magic pictures?”

“Mean faces that float in the dark. They won’t go away.”

“Oh Jeannie, that’s just your imagination!” mom laughed with relief. “It isn’t real. It’s just in your mind.” My mother was well acquainted with my active imagination – I had numerous invisible friends and hippity-hopped around the yard constantly making up songs and stories to amuse my pretend entourage. Mom rubbed my back and told me the magic pictures were all in my head.

Her words were meant to comfort, but this new knowledge frightened me. If the magic pictures were coming from inside my head, then no one else could help make them go away. It was only up to me, and I had no idea how to stop them. So I learned to wait them out, to cry more quietly so my sisters couldn’t hear. As the years went on, the magic pictures became scenes from real-life, full of biting criticism; the past replayed through a lens of self-loathing.

In sobriety, recovery begins as we go back and understand where our thinking got off-track. Minor misalignments from childhood carry us far off-course by the time we become adults. We heal by identifying these points in our lives and resetting (this is the concept of “UN RE” that was so powerful for me I put it onto coffee mugs and t-shirts).

The other night, as I endured archived mental footage of shortcomings, failures, and bad behaviour from years gone by, I sobbed in the silent way I’ve learned (only now it’s not my sisters I’m afraid of waking, it’s my gentle husband next to me). An hour went by. My visitor was relentless.

I tried to think my way out of it by remembering my mom comforting me all those years ago, telling me it was just my imagination, but the visitor would have none of it. She immediately twisted that thought into guilt: I misinterpreted mom’s explanation back then. How many times have I thought I was comforting my own children but instead I was screwing them up? Soon a fresh wave of tears came as I reflected on possible parental failures.

Then another voice emerged, perhaps this very voice I’m using to write with now.

“This is why I drank,” it said frankly. “Drinking helped me fall asleep before the whispering. Why am I allowing this? This is nothing but lake diving.”

“Lake diving” goes back to a lesson from Sunday School. When we ask for forgiveness, the thing we did wrong is forgiven and tossed into the bottom of a deep lake. Once we take responsibility for something and acknowledge regret, we have to accept the forgiveness for which we’ve asked. Going through memories is like scuba diving for old garbage from the bottom of a lake, emerging triumphantly with a shout. “I found it!”

My tears stopped suddenly as I realized the ridiculousness of waving decaying old dug-up relics over my head, reliving the pain, and calling, “God can you ever forgive me?!”

I pictured God in Billy Crystal form, waving his hands and shaking his head.

I’m busy over here, what do you need? I’ve already thrown that in the lake, why do you keep diving after it? Why do you ask me to do the same thing again and again? I’ve got the refugees to worry about, d’ya mind? You’ve been forgiven already, what you don’t believe me? I’m God! I should know. Cut it out. Leave it alone. Enough already.

Huddled under the blanket, I started to smile. As my mind became more alert, the dark visitor and all her power faded away. She doesn’t come often anymore, but clearly I need a plan to deal with her.

When Kiera relates an upsetting encounter to her therapist, he asks her which of her “parts” was engaged in the event. The concept is that all of us have different personality parts that we draw on in various circumstances: at work we engage one part, socially another part, in confrontation a different part – we draw on familiar past experiences and bring out that part of us. It’s why we might be competent leaders at work but fall into childish patterns at family events. Traumatic events from the past can lock in some “parts” that are not so helpful – a crisis might bring out a “deer in the headlights” response that comes from being powerless as a child, for example.

Kiera’s therapy involves envisioning all of her various parts together in a room, familiarizing herself with all of the ways she has learned to engage with the world: the tough girl, the frightened child, the academic, the victim, the dominatrix. Once engaged with awareness, she can call forward the most appropriate part of herself. Most people do this instinctively and have lots of healthy parts to work with. Trauma and/or mental illness can create parts that are injured and disruptive, however, and these need to be nurtured and understood.

In recovery, it is common to hear people talk about their addictive voice as a separate part of themselves. Some give this part names like Wolfie, Trixie, or The Itty Bitty Shitty Committee. I’ve never named mine; she’s too slippery and enmeshed to single out. But as I laid there in the dark, I was pretty sure she’d just left the room, chased out by Billy-Crystal-as-God’s sweeping gestures.

“What part of me was that?” I asked myself, emulating the therapist from Van Gelder’s memoire. “Who sneaks in here and whispers and plays old movies and makes me cry? Why does she do it?”

I found the answers in my mind, and fell asleep soon after.

Last night I crawled into bed with lingering dread, fearing the whispers as I have since childhood. Then I remembered that I could call forward a different part, so I asked the wise, kindly woman who’s been developing these past few years to comfort me to sleep. Her voice was raspy and warm as she murmured, “You are safe…everything is fine.”

With a twinkle in her eye she added, “No lake diving for you any more. God is busy taking care of the world. Time to get the rest you need.”

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Published by UnPickled

I am learning to walk without the crutch of alcohol. As I begin I am 1 day sober. Gulp.
I drank in private and hope to quit just as privately. The purpose of this blog is to help make me accountable - just by following you will give me enormous support and encouragement.
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[…] then procrastinate the actual “lights off” part. I’ve written many times about dreading sleeplessness. I know better, I do. I have strategies and thought processes and tea with valerian, and truth be […]

Such a powerful and much-needed read. I’ve struggled with the night whispering since I was a little girl, and have never been brave enough to share that with anyone. I appreciate your bravery. Hugs to you!

The voice is my head is always my mother’s voice. Sometimes I drink to get away from it. Sometimes I drink to show her that she is right. As usual. As always. Games we play: my mother’s voice and I. I even called that voice Wanda because I was afraid to admit to myself that I know exactly whose voice I hear. I like to pretend that it is someone else. But I always know exactly who that is.
Thank you for writing this post.

now that’s odd because I could have sworn that I first heard the phrase Itty Bitty Shitty Committee on your blog but apparently not… it’s a concept that I’ve found hugely useful in identifying and separating from those voices. I know them well too, but mine usually find me in my workplace, and what they tell me is that I don’t work hard enough, I’m not skilled enough, and that I will never get this task done on time.

they have been telling me these things all morning, in fact, and so this post is hugely appreciated and very timely for me.

I will certainly look out the book you mention. if you don’t already know it I can also highly recommend Rick Hanson’s book, The Buddha’s Brain, in which he describes how we can literally re-wire our brains to defeat the brain’s negativity bias.

thanks again for your honesty and openness in this post, and sending you an enormous hug! Prim xx

Hi Prim, you’re right I did use that term a few times because I thought it was so funny. But it didn’t stick, I think it was too light hearted to describe that part for me. I’m going to look up The Buddah’s Brain – thanks for the recommendation. Let’s both be kind to ourselves today.

Hi Jean,
Your words are very powerful here.
My life coach once called my voice, “Little Wounded Wendy”.
The one where I am so deeply hurt.
I used to have an angel in my bedroom, and when nighttime came, I could look at her.
xo
Wendy

My ‘picture of God’ is always Bill Hicks. Once, in therapy, we were doing a group meditation and were told “someone you really trust takes you by the hand”. Nobody showed up. So here I am , on the cliff, FAILING (even at therapy!) and this voice behind me says-‘Ya comin’?” I turned, and there he was, Bill. Thank you for this post, the night time is my most fearful. x

That’s the first time anyone’s writing has embodied so clearly why I drank. I appreciate you for being vulnerable and brave enough to share this part of your journey…I feel like you put ideas to words that I’ve never quite been able to express and it’s opened up a new path/direction for me to explore. I didn’t know that anyone else experienced this… Thank you 🙂

This is a wonderfully insightful and helpful post, thank you. I don’t identify with giving my broken parts names either as they are all a part of me who all need healing individually, but I’m only now beginning to appreciate that they are behind the reasons I drank. What you say here echoes that so closely for me and helps me give them their own identity which I hope will help on days when their voices get too loud.

What a beautiful post.
I know all,about that voice. And my 10 year old daughter told me the other morning her voice was telling her she is ugly and useless. It does start from a young age.

I know in yoga that voice is the ego, and part of the practice is to silence it, but I have found thinking of the voice as my inner child seeking attention helps. If she doesn’t get regular love and kindness she responds by acting out. Which gets my attention, even though it hurts.

I love your lake diving concept. Yes. Ruminating on the past never helps today. I’m levying those thoughts under water where they belong.

Your posts always mirror my thoughts so closely. My magic pictures often catch me unaware even in the middle of the day with a flashback so strong that my breath catches in my throat, and I am both ashamed and angered. It isn’t so incredulous what we did to protect ourselves by quieting that little voice. What is amazing is that we have purposely chosen to tune in to a higher choir. Thank you for such an empowering vision today.